This story took place at the Bowl Bar, near Victory Monument in the last part of 1964.

 

I had not been in country for very long. A month or so at the most. I had bought a second-hand motorcycle and was able to get around town fairly easy.

 

I worked the swing shift and after work I would change, get on the bike and head into town for food and drink. I wound up at the Bowl Bar one night after the regular bars had closed. One of the Old-Timers from the 5th was sitting at a table with a girl and I asked him if I could sit down  because the bar was crowded and I didn’t recognize anyone else from the 5th. He agreed and so comes the story.

 

The girl he is sitting with is a rather attractive and she can speak very good English. She is questioning my friend (for the life of me I can’t remember his name) about what kind of work he does. As an aside we were told to answer specific questions about what type of work we do with telling the asker that we were clerks or something innocent. Anyway, he gives her the standard answer about being a “Clerk” and she isn’t buying it. She tells him that she knows he gets on a buss and goes some place to work and she wants to know where and what he does. He keeps telling her that he is a clerk typist and she’s not believing him. He finally says “OK, I’ll tell you what I do but you’ve got to promise me that you will never tell anyone else. She promises and this is what he says.

 

You know that the Thai Government is Buddhist. She says yes I’m a Buddhist. I know that. He says, well it’s against the Buddhist way of life to take a life. She says that this is true. He says, well the Thai government has hired a bunch of American solders to be their executioners. And just last week I had to execute a woman for asking the same questions you’re asking me right now.

 

She grabbed her stuff and was gone in a flash.   I never saw her again. I almost ruined his story by blowing Singha Beer out my nose.

 

There was a concentrated effort by the ChiComs to infiltrate the unit. Counter intelligence had broken a ring of prostitutes and they had some pictures of known agents. Pictures were shown to the unit GI’s and a couple of guys were living with agents.

 

Merle (Squeaky) Taylor and I were sitting at a bar on Patpong, near Max’s Bar. Merle was talking to the young thing next to him. He turned to me and said “Let’s QSY”. QSY meaning “Change Frequency” or in this case, let’s go to another bar. The girl said “Oh, where you go now”. That shook both of us up.

 

Right after the Susie Bar, (right outside of Serri Court) opened a restaurant, one of the guys dropped his fork. He reached down to pick it up and found a microphone attached to the underside of his table. We used to sit at those tables and tell the most outrageous lies we could think of. I suspect, but don’t know , that the Thai HUMINT folks were responsible for that. We used to see Thai gate guards watching the guys going and coming into Serri Court. It might have been a training exercise, or not.

 

CWO3 James A. (Crusty) Luster, Ret.